If you're not taking it, this is your wake-up call.

by Yunus Barisik

You Need the D

Unless you're beach bumming or running around in the desert, chances are you're not spending enough time in the sun. The result? Your vitamin D levels sag lower than Lil Wayne's pants. This is doubled for indoor athletes and gym rats who, by default, get little exposure to sunshine.

Being vitamin D deficient – a common situation for those of us living in the Northern Hemisphere – wreaks havoc on your health and performance.

Many Western maladies (diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancer and increased mortality just to name a few) have been linked with not getting enough vitamin D. Even a mild lack of vitamin D, while not life threatening, can cause aches, pains, and a general feeling of lethargy (1).

Luckily, exogenous vitamin D intake carries a myriad of advantages for athletes and the general population.

A Laundry List of Health Benefits

Let's start with a question bound to pique every meathead's curiosity: Does vitamin D supplementation affect your strength? And if so, by how much?

Another review investigating the effects of vitamin D on strength measures in athletes found a positive impact on muscle strength. It should be noted that not all D's are equal. Vitamin D2 had no effect whereas vitamin D3 showed a clear trend for strength gains, which ranged from 1.37 to 18.75% in the studies analyzed (3).

Performance and Health Protection

The promise of adding pounds to your bench press and squat max should convince even the most skeptical gym bro of its performance-enhancing powers. But does extra D contribute to sports performance on the field?

In a UK study conducted on professional athletes and healthy non-athletes, subjects supplementing with 5000 IU of D3 per day for eight weeks witnessed a significant improvement in 10-meter sprint time and vertical jump height over subjects taking placebo. Interestingly, the researchers also stated that inadequate vitamin D concentration is downright detrimental to athletic performance (4).

Yet another study done on college football players participating in the NFL Scouting Combine found a link between low D and lower extremity muscle strain or core muscle injury (5).

If that wasn't enough, the positive effects of vitamin D aren't limited to increased strength, improved sports performance, or injury prevention. Vitamin D levels are inversely related with upper respiratory tract infections. If you're low on D, your risk of catching the flu goes way up (6). On a larger scale, this can have a jarring effect not only on the performance of individual athletes but on the entire team as well if the flu works its way through the roster.

As you can guess by now, a daily dose of D protects against acute respiratory tract infection (7). So, do yourself and those around you a favor by stocking up on bottles of vitamin D and make sure your buddies follow suit. That way, if you happen to sneeze right in some poor sap's grill after he tickles your ribs with an illegal jab or two in a wild goal-mouth scramble during practice, he'll be spared the vile phlegm fest otherwise bound to ensue.

What to Do With This Info

If you suspect your vitamin D is low, your first step is to get a blood test. Past your 30's, you should be monitoring your health markers through regular blood work anyway, so this is nothing to scoff at.

Even if your lab results indicate you're within range of "acceptable" D levels, popping a pill or two every day, thus pushing your D numbers from average to optimal, can only help.

How Much Do You Need?

Probably more than you'd think. According to the Food and Nutrition Board, 2000 IU is a safe daily "tolerable upper intake level" for vitamin D. However, this may be lower than justified. In fact, daily doses of D3 up to 10,000 IU have been deemed safe in healthy subjects (8).

Nevertheless, you can't go wrong with taking some extra vitamin D. It's cheap, convenient, and most importantly, it works.